US military plane crashes in Kyrgyzstan

A military transport plane crashed in mountains with three crew members aboard shortly after taking off from a United States airbase in Kyrgyzstan, officials said, with so far no survivors found.

The American refuelling plane fell in the northern Chuy province at around 2:55 pm (local time), the emergency ministry said.

"The plane definitely belongs to the US transit centre. On board were three crew members. Their fate is unknown," the emergency situations minister Kubatbek Boronov said in a televised comment after rushing to the scene.

"I cannot exclude that the three American pilots could have died, being burnt up alive in the explosion," he said, adding that the search operation would continue at least until nightfall.

The Manas airbase is key to US military operations in Afghanistan, used to ferry troops into the country, refuel warplanes and evacuate wounded soldiers.

The US base said the fate of the crew of the US tanker plane was unknown but emergency services are on the scene, the aircraft's US air base said.

"Emergency services are on scene. The status of the crew is unknown," the Transit Centre at Manas near Bishkek said in a statement, confirming the plane was a KC-135 Stratotanker that usually carries three crew.

The plane crashed near the mountain village of Chaldybar, around 200 kilometres from the capital and close to the border with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan's emergency situations ministry spokesman Abdisharip Bekilov said.

So far no casualties have been found at the scene, with some witnesses saying the pilot had apparently parachuted out.

"Debris from the crashed plane has scattered over a radius of 10 kilometres," the head of Kyrgzystan's transport prosecutors at the scene, Kuvan Mamakeyev, said.

"In such a disaster, alas, it is unlikely that the crew managed to survive," he said, adding that the US military attache had arrived at the scene.

Another witness, Daniyar Satymkulov told local radio from the scene that: "A parachute is lying there. But there are no people to be seen."

Witnesses told the Kyrgyz AKIPress news agency that they heard a buzz and then an explosion.

A local resident, Nurlan Derdenov, told local news website 24.kg that the plane "blew up in the air".

"School children managed to film it on cell phones. When the plane fell, it hit a high-voltage power line," he said.

A photograph published by AKIPress showed a broken-off wing of a plane lying on the ground with the US flag and the plane's identification number visible.

The US airbase opened in 2001 at Bishkek's Manas international airport. According to its website, around 1,200 US military personnel are located there.

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